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As any long time visitor of our site knows, we’ve recently been unusually abuzz about our new Multi-Flex servers. If you’ve Googled Intel’s new Multi-Flex systems, you’ve surely gotten plenty of useless tech garble.

What this means for you is actually simple- a hosting platform virtually void of even the potential of any hardware-related downtime.Opting away from all of the overcomplicated “grid” platforms in the past, year that have been notorious for software explosions and at minimum, overcomplicated for the most simple of tasks.

By going redundant at the hardware level with the Intel Modular Multi-Flex server, we’re above to maximize uptime, and paired with the fantastic cluster scalability of InterWorx, we’ve prepared to host the most successful of websites.

Official Press Release: Ubiquity Adopts Intel’s Modular Multi-Flex Server Platform

The World Wide Web Consortium is a beast well too unknown to too many webmasters. Along with maintaining the standards of the web, the w3 lets you validate your web pages and style sheets to find out if the code you used is right.

Who Cares?

If your site works it works right? Unfortunately no. Some browsers overlook css and html problems, while others don’t - which means your awesome website might not look so awesome to some people if the code isn’t squeaky clean. To go even further, Google’s webmaster guidelines makes it pretty clear the things that they look at when deciding what sites are high quality for their search results.

But Don’t Worry

As big a deal as valid code is - you’re not the only one that’s slacking. Most websites on the Internet aren’t valid, and even being mostly valid will put your site above most. Writing HTML is easy - writing a totally valid website is pretty hard (hey - not even Google lives up to their own standards). I did it for us - but I’m not going to lie - that’s a week of my life I want back. So anyway, the next time your website looks awesome in FireFox and your visitors using Internet Explorer v. 0.1.2 beta start complaining - it’s time to validate.

So some of you might have noticed a few changes in your control panel. Interworx 3.0 has landed!!! (Thanks guys!!! but you told us last year at HostingCon it would be out a few weeks after we left Las Vegas)

If you can believe it or not, all computer guys aren’t dorks:

I am walking into a real Club with real people:

Here is Interworx guys with the Ubiquity crew (other than Socheat who wouldn’t come out and be “social”) EDIT: I guess Socheat was getting drinks for Chris and Paul. . . maybe he was there

Alright last old HostingCon pictures, then I will get back to rambling, here is Corey and the “paid to hang out with dorks chick”:

At that party the Interworx guys said it would be another month or so and we would get our beloved 3.0, well almost a year later we get it. Let me be the first to say it was well worth the wait. Here is the list of the updates:

New Features & Improvements

We have updated all of our systems and can honestly say we haven’t had ANY issues! In the days when Ubiquity ran that one panel (Plesk) we held our breath during updates. Really I did, it was the scariest thing on earth, knowing that updates have broken everything in the past and then having to wait 24 hours plus to hear back from a “Plesk engineer” tell you reboot your machine. With that being said, the only reason with Nobis Tech hasn’t written a panel is because Interworx did it for us

Also with the updates to ScriptWorx (InterWorx version of installatron or fantastico de luxe) it enables live updates to the packages that get deployed. Here is a current list of all the new packages and updated ones: link

I could go on and on about how cool it is, but really you should just signup and see for yourself.

later,

clint

As many of our most Ubiquity-loving users know, our company has now been one of a far-too scarce sect of provider’s supporting the Novell-sponsored Mono Project’s complete solution for running ASP.NET 1.1 applications on Linux for some time. We would like to take this opportunity to reinforce why this decision was made, what’s been going on in the world of Mono, and what can be expected in the near future.

Release of Mono 1.1.17

The latest release of Mono was let out at the end of August with a number of bug fixes and improvements upon previous versions. As it applies to web use, the greatest improvement was of adding support for X.509 client certificates in order to make System.Web.HttpClientCertificate work with Apache. Certificate validation may now be done by Apache, a Mono application, or both.

This release follows 1.1.16, which was let out not long after our first implementation of mod_mono hosting, which contained some very significant enhancements in performance optimiziation for approachingly flawless execution of ASP.NET 1.1 applications.

Support for ASP.NET 2.0

As many who have come to us have been curious, Mono’s support for ASP.NET 2.0 is in the works and making progress. On one page of the Mono website user’s can check the current status of each feature in Mono’s tests of the ASP.NET 2.0 framework. Mainsoft, a key contributor to Mono, also released a peak of some of the ASP.NET 2.0 functionality last month in something called the Grasshopper 2.0 technology preview, which is well-worth a look-over for those seeking to reaffirm their faith in the direction the project is headed.

Criticisms of mod_mono vs. .NET Framework

Ubiquity’s systems administrators are frequently asked about the drawbacks of using Mono for .NET 1.1 on Linux vs. Microsoft .NET Framework on a Windows IIS system.  It stands to reason that existing imperfections should remain, however to date, there have been no significant criticisms presented to Ubiquity’s staff. If you are one of the many Mono web developers in our community, please present any problems found to our support team, so that we can aid in better supporting such problems in the future.

Bloomington, Illinois (June 19, 2006) - Ubiquity Hosting Solutions, an eminent Linux hosting provider, has announced two new and highly unique Linux tools to be added to their web hosting services effective immediately.

The first of these tools provides web developers a rare service within the Linux web hosting industry which has been labeled jailed shell access. With this tool, webmasters are given the authority to connect to the web hosting provider using Secured Shell Handling (SSH), allowing the capability to compress and decompress files on the web server, execute Linux bash scripts, monitor system health, and a large variety of other features. Security in this environment has been maintained for the reason that Linux shell commands available to the webmaster have been “jailed”, which in turn will limit the availability of potentially dangerous commands to the users.

In addition to SSH, Ubiquity has stabilized the Mono Project’s open source tool which emulates .NET Framework in a Linux web hosting environment. Through Mono, Ubiquity has successfully assembled a stable and effective platform for running ASPx scripting from a Linux system – and in turn bridging the gap between Linux and Windows web hosting which otherwise exists. When asked to comment, Chief Technical Officer for Ubiquity Clint Chapman stated “Linux is capable of so much more than what most web hosting companies are doing. We decided that the time had come to start delivering the full potential of what we offer”.

More information on SSH and the Mono Project can be found at Ubiquity’s web site at http://www.ubiquityhosting.com

After several months in our test environment at FreeWebsiteHost.net - the admins have deemed the InterWorx control panel ready for effective use with new Ubiquity Hosting accounts and stable enough to uphold our 99.9% uptime SLA. This change will add a number of features such as 4 new in-depth statistic generators include real-time website statistics. It will also mean, however, that there will be a few less auto-installer apps available to new signups, however our library is expected to grow ten-fold as things progress.

After roughly 1 and 1/2 months of no signups, we are proud to announce that signups are active once again with our free hosting research project at FreeWebsiteHost.net . This new environment is not yet totally stable, however has been deemed capable of hosting sites with at least 75% uptime at this time - and is expect to drasticly improve across the next month.

Currently the largest mode of concern is handling the volume of signups that FreeWebsiteHost.net generates. Recently climbing it’s way into Alexa’s top 20,000 websites in under a month, we are working hard to develop a system that can handle any given level of stress. It is our hope that by pushing these limits that this, in turn, will allow us to better understand the capabilities of various software, scripts, and techniques at work with Ubiquity.

In response to a feud between two of the largest internet backbone providers on the net (info here) which has left much of the internet in a blackout, we have altered our mix of carrier networks replacing our direct connection to Cogent to direct routing through nLayer (also with routing at Equinix). Network performance has continued on flawlessly.

We are kicking things into high-gear this week with the Free Website Host experiment.

Control Panel

First, we are scrapping our cPanel setup entirely moving to a solid base on the InterWorx control panel. By using InterWorx, we will be able to grow miles beyond where we already have; while enjoying a much more stable hosting environment.

Support

We have 2 new moderators on Free Website Host community forums, so give them a good welcome. Nick and Erik will be helping provide end-user support for all that is Free Website Host, while allowing for the rest of the FWH staff to concentrate fully on network and expansion goals.

Image

We’ve given the website at www.freewebsitehost.net a complete makeover. Although it is relatively basic at this point in time, we have intent to build it into the best free hosting site on the web.

Many of you have noticed a total lack of information on the Ubiquity newswire as of late, and it’s not because nothing has been happening. The truth of the matter is that there’s just too much happening to even attempt fitting into one of our usual two-line blips. So here it is . . .

In Shared Hosting . . .
We’ve added PostGresSql, SpamAssassin, and AppVault features to all accounts, three very advanced features included within the Plesk control panel. Also, Plesk has been upgraded to version7.5.3 Reloaded, which should provide better CP functionality all around. The largest highlight of this update can be seen in Horde’s latest IMP webmail software. All webmail accounts are now fully customizable and are loaded with several new features.

UbiquityServers.com . . .
As we continue to expand, we have come to the decision that one web site is no longer enough to hold Ubiquity. Plans have been fully laid out for a network of 7 hosting-related websites that will revolve around UbiquityHosting.com, the next of which will be UbiquityServers.com. The overall purpose of this decision to seperate our diverse services into into their own entities in order to ensure that all of our dedicated clients recieve the specialized attention they deserve, while also giving special attention in advancing the services themselves. Upon launch this July, we will be resuming metered server sales at Team Technologies, as well as adding Disaster Recovery and Colocation services.

Plans are also still in the works to open our second colocation. The overall intent of this operation will be to act as our Value Network to provide our clients a solution that we can provide cheaper than our InterNAP /Dell / N+1 layout in Cedar Falls. At this time we will also be resuming our unmetered campaigns to cater to our clients that require more bandwidth. More information on this will soon follow.